I miss you
I've been home since last Thursday. Leaving you behind with your husband, son, and daughter-in-law was ridiculously difficult. They love you just as much as I, if not for quite so long.
Coming home is both a relief and a chore. The 3-hour drive was beautiful and relatively stress-free. Exchanging the quiet, light-drenched oasis of your pristine home for the chaos and mess of my own...not quite as easy.
Dirty dishes greet me in the sink and ingredients are scattered across the counter from meals made while I was away. In a cathartic, ADD-fueled frenzy, I tidy, scrub, load-run-empty the dishwasher only to refill it. My home is neither as well-designed nor as well-maintained as yours, but it is full of life and love and most importantly right now...health.
We are passing the anniversaries of my brother-in-law, father-in-law, and husband's aunts deaths. Yours looms in the future...gnawing at my mind when I try to sleep.
We are experts, you and I, at seizing each moment and finding humor, no matter how macabre, in existence with all of its messy realities. How will I manage to find those moments of joy when you are gone? I have been blessed with an excess of love throughout my life, but your friendship is the ever-present foundation of my adult life.
No one compares to you, my sweet friend.
I'll return to you this Friday, once my work is done; my wedding anniversary celebrated. I will leave behind the happy chaos of life with my husband of 31 years, the daughter named for you, plus two more, and an aging rescue dog. I will change your dressings and try to be as gentle as possible. I will attempt to give you something to laugh about and I will carefully guard each moment that I can share with you now, no matter how difficult.